I knew the kiss was a mistake before it happened. That is the awful thing about some mistakes: they announce themselves, quietly and clearly, and you still walk towards them as if they are the only warm room on a cold night.
His name was Cian, and he was the friend I called when my boiler broke, when I got ghosted, when my mother had a scare in hospital and I needed someone to sit beside me in the coffee shop across from the Mater. We met years earlier in a cramped flat in Stoneybatter, at a party where everyone was pretending to understand natural wine. He made me laugh by opening a bottle with a screwdriver and a confidence he had not earned. After that, he became part of the furniture of my life.
We were never single at the same time in any useful way. When I broke up with Mark, Cian had just moved in with Aoife. When he and Aoife ended, I was seeing a teacher from Drumcondra who wore beautiful coats and never asked me questions. So Cian and I stayed safely in the place called friendship, which is not always safe at all. We went for coffees near Smithfield, pints in The Cobblestone, long walks along the canal when one of us needed to say something without looking the other in the eye.
By last November, we were both single, both tired, both acting like this was a funny coincidence rather than a dangerous alignment of planets. He had started sending voice notes instead of texts. I had started saving them. He would say my name at the beginning, like he was trying it out in a different language. “Niamh, you won’t believe who I saw on the Luas.” “Niamh, I think my boss is actually three crows in a coat.” Small things. Useless things. The kind that become precious when you are lonely.
The night it happened, rain had been falling since lunchtime, that determined Dublin rain that seems personally offended by umbrellas. We met in Temple Bar because he had tickets to see a friend play a short set upstairs in a pub. I remember the place being too hot, our coats steaming on the backs of chairs, the windows fogged white. Cian stood beside me, shoulder pressed lightly against mine, and every ordinary touch felt newly edited.
Afterwards, we didn’t want to go home. That was the first poor decision. We walked towards the quays under one small umbrella that belonged to neither of us. He bought chips from a place near Dame Street and we ate them with our fingers, laughing at nothing, passing the little wooden fork back and forth until I realised how intimate it was and stopped laughing.
He looked at me then. Not dramatically. Not like in films. Just with a kind of tired honesty that made my chest tighten. “Do you ever think we missed something?” he asked.
I should have pretended not to understand. I should have said we missed the last bus. I should have done any of the sensible things available to me. Instead, I said, “All the time.”
We kissed under the edge of the Ha’penny Bridge, with the rain ticking against the river and people pushing past us towards warmer places. It was not a perfect kiss. His nose bumped mine. My hair stuck to my cheek. He tasted of salt and vinegar and stout. But it was familiar and frightening, like finding a door in your own house that you had never opened.
For about ten seconds, I was happier than I had been in months. Then he pulled back, and I saw the change arrive in his face. Not regret exactly. Worse. Panic trying to dress itself as kindness.
“Niamh,” he said, and my name sounded different now. Smaller.
I knew. Of course I knew. The great romance I had half-imagined in quiet moments had not landed for him in the same way. Or maybe it had, and that scared him more. Either way, something between us had cracked, and both of us were pretending not to hear it.
We walked to the taxi rank in silence. He hugged me before I got into the car, but it was the careful hug of someone carrying a glass too full. At home, I sat on the edge of my bed in my damp tights and waited for my phone to light up. It did, after twenty-three minutes.
“I’m sorry,” he wrote. “I don’t want to lose you.”
That sentence made me cry harder than if he had said nothing. Because it meant he knew there was something to lose, and he was already trying to preserve the version of us that existed before the bridge. But you cannot unknot a rope by pretending it was never tied.
For a few weeks, we tried to be normal. We sent memes. We met once for coffee near <a href="https://www
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
